


Under Pressure

by HeartOfTheMirror



Series: Under Pressure [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Blow Jobs, Bottom Steve Rogers, Couch Cuddles, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Exhibitionism, Friendship, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Political Expediency, Possessive Behavior, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Bucky Barnes, Psychological Trauma, Sexual Fantasy, Steve Rogers Feels, Underwater Blow Jobs, Voyeurism, pretending things are fine when they're really not fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2018-11-16 14:11:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11254572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartOfTheMirror/pseuds/HeartOfTheMirror
Summary: It's not like Steve's afraid of tap water. He's not an idiot. It's just the ocean.... it's so big. And Steve knows what it's like to be trapped under it. Helpless. Drowning. Frozen.He can't let the others know. Captain America isn't afraid of anything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mara_jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mara_jade/gifts).



> So I know basically nothing about Namor in the comics except that he's an asshole in a speedo. I've obviously taken great liberties with that mythology.
> 
> Updates will be weekly if all goes well.
> 
> This fic is a gift for mara_jade who won my writerly services in the Fandom Trumps Hate Auction some months ago and has been kind enough to patiently wait for my glacial writing process.

Atlantis doesn’t glisten or sparkle and it wass full of total assholes. Not exactly what Steve expected, to say the least.

Growing up as a kid, when Steve thought about the lost city of Atlantis at all, he always imagined that it would be made of diamonds and glass or something. Science fiction had been all the rage among kids his age, back in the day. Or at least, it was all Bucky would talk about and Bucky was the only one who’d bother to talk to Steve on the regular, so.

His Ma took them to the library sometimes. There was one big book there with the spine cracked and taped back together. It was full of old folk tales but Steve didn’t bother giving the text more than a cursory scan. It was the illustrations that caught his eye. There was one, in particular, a lovely rendition in pen and ink that had Steve tracing the ink lines with his fingertips. They were so thin, even thinner than Steve’s brittle bones and unreliable breaths. 

The illustration showed crumbling columns, and screaming men in togas, furious waves crashing in a mighty spray. The caption was some nonsense about “God’s judgment upon the vanity of men” and “the second Babylon” but the notion of a paradise lost never sat with Steve well. In those days he couldn’t wrap his mind around anything better than the paradise they were going to build in the future. Bucky talked about it all the time. How much better the world would be with the new technology, the new medicines, that scientists were cooking up in their labs like Dr. Frankenstein trying to crack the secret to life itself. 

They should have known better. Steve should have been careful what he wished for. 

But, still, despite everything they’d been through things were good. 

He and Bucky had their own apartment now, three floors over a boutique sex store in the hipster hub of Brooklyn. It moved in after they did. The owner was really good about letting them sneak in and browse after she closed up for the day. 

The serum had made Steve the man he’d always imagined in the mirror and Bucky was by his side, content to live in sin with his best pal. Neither of them was likely to be committed to a mental institution or shot in a back alley if they kissed in the middle of the street. Both of them had so much cash in their bank accounts that they didn’t even have to keep count as they piled mountains of groceries into their carts at the store.

Things were good. Steve didn’t have any right to be unhappy.

* * *

When Steve first saw Namor again his heart sank right to the bottom of the ocean of dread that had suddenly frozen inside his stomach. Having old war buddies coming back from the dead was never as fun as it sounded. Steve learned this the hard way, of course. He learned everything the hard way, it seemed to him.

The King of Atlantis was swaggering up Rockaway beach in a tiny speedo that would have made some of Brookyln’s seasoned rent boys blush. But it wasn’t Namor’s cocky swagger or highly questionable outfit that made Steve feel like he was being gutted like a landed Marlin. 

The dead were safe. Their stories were bookended and emptied of their suspense. Gabe and Jim and all the others had lived relatively long, full lives. No one could hurt them anymore. It wasn’t like that with Peggy, and Bucky and Steve. 

Peggy, of course, had lived long enough to see her life’s work become a HYDRA incubator. These days all she had to look forward to was a constant cycle of forgetting, mourning, and remembering Steve, her friends, and her family. The worst days were when she was so far gone she confused him with her husband. Three different tabloid and internet reporters had been caught trying to weasel their way into her nursing home after the fall of the Triskelion to get an inflammatory comment from a woman who had long since lost her faculties. 

Bucky, when he could sleep, still kept an Uzi under his pillow and three knives within arm’s reach. He and Steve had had multiple screaming fights about dentist’s chairs and psychiatrist’s offices. 

And Steve, well. Steve’s comparatively minor complaints were nothing in the face of what had happened to his two great loves. Steve didn’t have any right to complain, not really. It would be ungrateful. Things were good.

But there was Namor, swaggering up to the bedraggled but dutifully assembled Avengers, who had flown out to meet him fresh from battle because the words “. . . interspecies, international fuck-up on such a massive scale it makes Stark’s ego look like a fucking chia seed,” had been shouted through comms by a man who was very definitely not Nicholas J. Fury (everyone knew that the former director of Shield had died with his one-time agency).

“Steve!” Namor called when he was close enough to see Steve’s face, smeared with sweat and soot but uninhibited from view by his recently discarded helmet. “Land news doesn’t often make it down to us undersea but I had heard they brought Captain America back. I didn’t know it was the original flavor though.” Namor gave Steve a very suggestive once over that had Bucky, who was standing beside him in his own Captain America uniform, fuming and gritting his teeth. Even though he had graciously offered to make an exception back in the day for Peggy, Bucky wasn’t really the sharing kind of guy. Especially not when it came to Steve.

There had always been something of a rivalry Between Namor andBucky when it came to getting into Steve’s pants during the war. Privately, Steve thought that Namor just liked to rile Bucky up for his own amusement but Bucky would always just get more riled whenever Steve voiced that opinion. Peggy had been terribly long-suffering about the whole thing but if it really bothered her she would have put a stop to that nonsense straight away. 

Steve tried not to be amused that the two men, who liked and respected each other so enormously, got under each other’s skin so constantly.

“So I see you two have met before,” Stark said, with a tired look between Namor and Steve. The man had bruised half-moons the size of grapefruits under his eyes, and a broken nose that was currently being treated by experimental nanotechnology. As a result, Tony had a fraction of his usual energy and he sounded like he had the worst sinus infection in the history of man. In different circumstances, Steve might have found that funny.

“Namor,” Bucky said pointedly, stepping forward and extending his hand.

“Ah, and Cap Lite, now with a refreshing new look. Same great taste?” Namor teased with one of his asshole sneers. Bucky cracked a laugh, not at all bothered when he was the one being hit on.

“You wish you knew,” Bucky tossed back. Namor was making no effort to hide his fascination with Bucky’s metal arm.

“Okay, I’m totally lost here,” Stark said, looking back and forth between the three relics of WWII.

“Hey,” Clint complained, “That’s my line!”

“Do you lead these pathetic imbeciles?” Namor asked Steve offhandedly, looking over the war-torn Avengers with a critical eye.

“More or less,” Steve answered with a noncommittal shrug. He still didn’t like to think back to the days before Bucky had been officially pardoned and drafted to the team. He and Tony had never officially settled the question of leadership after that last dispute.

Disagreements between Avengers tended to… escalate quickly.

Natasha quirked a sharp eyebrow as Namor and his gaze lingered on her. He smirked, being no less obvious with how his gaze strayed over her body than he was with Steve.

“Hello darling,” he said in his slickest voice.

“Your Majesty,” Natasha replied with a charming little blush, looking up through her eyelashes. Steve fought hard not to roll his eyes and blow her act. She’d have him begging and bribing her to take a place in his court before the day was out.

Steve had no idea what Natasha intended to do once she was there or if she was just playing the King for the pleasure of watching the arrogant ass eat out of the palm of her hand. Either way, espionage wasn’t Steve’s game, and neither was waiting around for the other shoe to drop. 

“Namor, why are you here?” Steve asked, rubbing his brow as if that could hide how exhausted his voice sounded. No one seemed to notice anyway. They’d just come out of a battle and Steve, notoriously grumpy when he didn’t get at least 5,000 calories a day, hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Steve’s exhaustion was more than a simple case of the hangries, but there was no reason for even the sneakiest of the Avengers to suspect that. Steve worked hard to make sure there was no reason for anyone to suspect that just opening his eyes in the morning was enough to make Steve’s bones weary.

“Your people have been testing weapons under the ocean. Everything beneath the waves is _my_ territory by my right as the King of Atlantis. Surface dwellers have put my people and our ecosystem in unacceptable danger. As such, I am here to issue an ultimatum.

“Either the surface dwellers will appoint an ambassador of my choosing to be held hostage in our capital, and they immediately halt all undersea testing or I will flood your coastlines and poison your rivers. No beach will be safe for your swimmers, your surfers, your tourists. No ship will be left unmolested, be it anchored in a harbor or open ocean.”

“ _Wow_ ,” Bucky said slowly. “You were a dick in the war and you’re still a dick decades later. Why am I not surprised that a throne hasn’t humbled you?”

Tony waved his arms in front of him in an exaggerated “no” motion. “Rewind,” he said exasperatedly. “Let’s go back to the part about Atlantis. Wait, no, let’s go back to the part where another relic from my father’s heyday just washed up looking like a rent boy who’d give it up for a string of Mardi Gras beads.”

“Uh, Tony,” Clint said, tugging on Tony’s metal arm and looking out at the sea with wide eyes. The other Avengers cast their eyes out toward the water which was creeping back away from their feet and towering above their heads in an unnaturally still wave that was twenty feet or more in the air.

“You’ve made your point, Namor,” Steve said placatingly, showing his palms to his old friend. “We know you’re serious. We’re willing to talk about this, alright? It’s just that the Avengers aren’t in a position to-” The water came crashing down suddenly, like the hand of God swatting at a fly. Bucky dove forwards a fraction of a second ahead of the wave, tackling Steve and holding on for dear life, as though that could save either of them.

Sand and spray kicked up into Steve and Bucky’s faces from the force of the water’s impact on the beach. All at once, they were on a little island of dry sand, the only raised point on the beach that hadn’t been eroded by the force of Narmor’s attack.

As the churning foam washed back out toward the sea, it swept the other Avengers off their feet with its unexpected force.

Steve gasped although the sheet of cold water never actually came anywhere near his mouth or nose. His mind was still whistling with the sound of the Valkyrie plummeting toward the gleaming pane of white ice below.

“That was a dick move bro,” Clint grumbled, swatting sand off his stubbled cheek.

“I have a big dick,” Namor said, shrugging. “Swinging it around is half the fun.”

“Oh my God,” Tony gasped, “There really is a human being on this planet with a bigger ego than my own.”

“And worse jokes,” Natasha added gamely. Namor reassessed Natasha.

“You should be a queen,” he told her, in all seriousness. “You are wasted on the surface world.”

“Men have said that to me before. And a few women.” Natasha shrugged. “You’ll have to work harder than that if you want me to be your ambassador.” Natasha flipped her hair- a subtle move that Steve had seen bring down entire nations (small ones, but still fully autonomous).

“Though I lust and respect you, red queen of the surface dwellers, you aren’t the ambassador I had in mind.”

Bucky scoffed loudly. “Namor drop the shtick, okay? We all know you were raised right here on the surface, same as me and Steve. Don’t pull that whole, ‘your ways are foreign’ b.s. You and I have had too many arguments about baseball and cigarettes for that shit to fly, no matter how long you’ve been flashing your mankini on the ocean floor,” Bucky said.

Bucky pushed himself up as he spoke and then reached out a hand to help Steve up too. Steve knew he’d gotten lucky again- everyone else was too shocked by Namor to scrutinize Steve’s reaction. He’d have to hold himself together better in the future if he wanted to keep them from worrying about his little thing with the water.

“Bucky, my old friend, you truly are the forthright asshole I remember. Though your issue with authority figures as quadrupled since last we snarled at each other over Steve like two starving lions circling the same gazelle.” Namor said as Bucky beat the sand off of his boyfriend with none too gentle sweeps of his hand across Steve’s backside.

“Circle nothing buddy, this is all mine,” Bucky snarled, leaving his hand over a very compromising piece of Steve’s anatomy.

“Um, Bucky,” Steve squeaked, trying to gently pry his second-in-command’s hand off. Tomato red, Steve knew his face was giving away all the less than clean thoughts in his head to the other Avengers.

“Okay, so if I’m reading this correctly,” Tony said, blessedly interrupting Namor and Bucky’s pissing contest over Steve’s family jewels. “The HBIC in Bikini Bottom over there used to roll with Ice Cap and the Winter Wiener in World War II. And now he wants Steve to run off with him beneath the waves and be some kind of beach bunny ambassador.”

“This one is not as stupid as the other surface dwellers,” Namor noted, pleasantly surprised.

“He’s Howard’s son,” Steve said offhandedly, making Tony roll his eyes aggressively.  
“Tony, what do you mean he wants me to be the ambassador? We haven’t even decided if there _will_ be an ambassador yet! And I’m pretty sure only the president can appoint one, anyway.”

Namor scoffed. “The fool will do what you tell him. You’ve been the moral leader of this country since 1942.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Steve said hesitantly. “I mean, anyone who does the right thing is a moral leader but I’m not-”

“You can’t have him,” Bucky said flatly.

“We need him for missions,” Natasha agreed.

“I’m pretty sure I’m not who Namor wanted anyway, guys,” Steve said nervously. “I would be the the worst ambassador. Ever.”

“I’ve always wanted you, Steve,” Namor crooned, eyes glinting at Bucky.

“Fucking asshole,” Bucky muttered darkly.

“The number of surface dwellers I know, and trust, is very limited,” Namor said. “Of that number, I needed an American since your nation dominates international politics and military operations. And I needed an American who was influential and trustworthy enough to his fellow countrymen that my demands would be taken seriously without me having to destroy a small coastline first. So Steve can come with me or I can pick a city and make my point. Those are the only options I will consider.”

“Are you threatening to commit an act of terror?” Tony asked darkly.

“No, fool, I’m threatening to commit an act of war. Once my power has been made apparent there are many American enemies, such as Russia and China, who would be more than happy to sign treaties halting all underwater military operations and testing in exchange for an alliance.

“I would rather not do that, though. For old time’s sake.”

“Steve isn’t going _anywhere_ ,” Bucky repeated vehemently.

“We aren’t going to start a war for the sake of your living arrangements Barnes,” Natasha said flatly.

“This ass-clown comes in _our house_ ,” Tony starts, ignoring the others completely and waving his arms around wildly, “and just starts spewing this incredible shit like he threatens to start World War Three over breakfast all the time. You’d think a guy who lived through the sequel wouldn’t be so hype to go for a trilogy but you know what? If he wants to throw down, we can throw down. We don’t negotiate. With. Terrorists.”

Steve mopped his face with his hand, trying to ignore how everyone was talking over each other. Pressure was building between his temples, squeezing his ribcage in on his lungs until he might as well have been breathing underwater. He could still feel the cold encasing him- the tingling burn where ice water slowly froze over his limbs, his cheeks….

“Stop!” He yelled when he couldn’t take the images behind his eyes anymore. Everyone turned to look at him with wide eyes.

“This is what we’ll do,” Steve said, trying to sound as if he wasn’t making this up on the spot. “I will go to the president and present your proposal for an ambassador program for Atlantis. I’ll pass along your hopes for treaty, alliance, and possibly trade. I will volunteer to be the Atlantian ambassador on the condition that I will not live in Atlantis full time and I will have absolute freedom to return to the surface anytime I see fit. Can you live with that Namor?”

“I believe I can,” Namor said. “I will meet you in one week’s time at your tower in New York City. Goodbye, old friends,” he said to Steve and Bucky, “And to you, most exquisite creature,” he said to Natasha who rolled her eyes. Then, without so much as a by-your-leave, Namor walked back out into the surf and dove down into the darkness and out of sight.

“That guy is a _dick_ ,” Tony said emphatically.

“Some folks never change,” Steve said amiably, playing the hapless old man card in an attempt to distract them all from how his hands were shaking though he’d balled them into tight fists.


	2. Chapter 2

**Two Weeks Later**

“You can not seriously be considering this!” Bucky said emphatically. He grabbed the stack of folded shirts from Steve’s hands and tossed them carelessly over his shoulder. 

“Buck,” Steve reprimanded, pinching the bridge of his nose and reaching deep inside himself for patience. 

He cast a woeful eye at his empty suitcase. Most of his possessions were now scattered around their bedroom instead of carefully packed away like they should have been. It wasn’t that Steve didn’t understand the impulse but they weren’t children anymore; they had jobs to do and throwing a tantrum wasn’t about to change things. 

“No,” Bucky said, “Don’t give me that. This is a big decision and as your fucking _boyfriend_ who shares a fucking _bed_ with you, I should get a say in it!” Bucky ran his hands anxiously through his long hair, sending it in almost as much of a disarray as Steve’s shirts were now in. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Bucky said emphatically. “You always think it’s up to you to save the world but this one’s not on you, Steve.” Steve took a deep breath. He had a feeling he knew what this was really about. 

“I get it,” Steve said, trying his damnedest to see things from Bucky’s point of view. “I know you don’t like us to be apart. And I know you don’t like the idea that Namor might try something but Bucky, I promise you, he won’t. Natasha is really more his-” 

“Wait just a fucking minute,” Bucky said, going from desperate to pissed like a lightening strike. “You think I’m upset because of fucking Namor? You think I don’t trust you completely? After everything we’ve been through? Fuck you, Steve... just, fuck you.” Bucky turned away, holding himself around the middle like he might break in half, and Steve felt lower than dirt. 

He tried to keep his resolve. He tried to remember what Bucky’s therapist had said about his separation anxiety and unhealthy codependency and what it meant to trust each other in a relationship. 

“I’d feel the same way if it were you, but Buck I have to go,” Steve said gently, trying to be firm without hurting Bucky anymore. 

“You don’t have to. If you told Namor no, if you sent someone else, a real diplomat maybe, then he’d just deal with it. If he cares about his fish pond half as much as he pretends to then he wouldn’t let something like that jeopardize the deal he wants to make. You’re just doing that thing you do, taking everything on yourself. It’s not your responsibility, not this time. I don’t want you to go where I can’t follow,” Bucky pleads, turning back to look at Steve with hangdog eyes. 

“It’s not like I _want_ to leave. It’s just that I know I can talk Namor down from his posturing horseshit-” 

Bucky scoffed and rolled his eyes. “You? The perfect Captain America? Swearing? I don’t think I’ve heard that since the last time a Panzer was headed our way.” Bucky crossed his arms petulantly. The blow hurt more than Steve would ever let Bucky know. They were both very aware of the difference between the persona Steve wore in front of the cameras and the man he was beneath the suit. 

“You have and you know it,” Steve said, already playing out how his next words might change the course of the conversation. “Last night in bed, for example,” As Steve said it he let his eyes drag down Bucky’s body, his tongue coming out to swipe quickly at his lips. Bucky smirked; couldn’t help himself. He stepped closer to Steve and let their foreheads knock together. Steve’s arms came around Bucky, who was still holding himself tightly. 

“I don’t really want to fight,” Bucky muttered into Steve’s shoulder. “I know I can’t change your mind. I never could. It just feels like you won’t listen to me and that pisses me off. I’m trying to tell you this is a stupid idea and it’s like you just don’t care. 

“We aren’t invincible Steve, and I couldn’t take it if I lost you again. I couldn’t- I couldn’t be the man you love if I thought you were really gone this time. I don’t think you fully understand that.” Steve hummed, buying time as he ran his fingers through Bucky’s hair, up and down the curve of his spine through his soft dark gray henley. He had no idea what to say in response to that. 

He thought he was listening to Bucky, was he? He knew he was stubborn and pigheaded. Even, and maybe especially, when he didn’t have to be. And Steve knew that a lot of what Bucky was saying was fair. 

But the mission was bigger than him. It was even bigger than him and Bucky, as much as Steve hated to admit that, even inside his own head. Atlantis going to war with, essentially, every nation on earth above sea level would be a major global catastrophe. And God forbid another alien invasion happened while they were weak from the fighting. 

What he was being asked to do was hardly dangerous. At least, it wasn’t dangerous so long as Namor was on his side and feeling hospitable. But for all his talk and his posturing Steve had spent months in the war with Namor and he had a feeling that the kid really hadn’t changed that much. He still played up his natural dickish tendencies to hide how much he cared. He still got under people’s skin to test their character. He respected Steve, had followed him in battle. Even if things went sideways two thousand leagues under the sea Steve had to believe that Namor would at least get him back to dry land. 

Steve didn’t let himself think about what it would be like, to be burried alive again down in the dark blue depths. The humiliation of having to rely on someone else for everything, including his own personal safety. The only people he’d ever been able to tolerate that from were his mom and Bucky, and even then he hadn’t been particularly graceful about it. To have to depend on Namor…. Yeah that would suck. 

But the worst case scenario of not going was literally the end of the world. Steve just couldn’t justify not going, even with Bucky’s concerns. But there was no way he could say that in as many words without upsetting his lover further. 

“I’m sorry for cursing you out earlier,” Bucky whispered. Several minutes must of passed of the two of them just standing there, pressed together while Steve got lost in his own head. “That was a shitty thing to say.” 

“We’ve said worse to each other,” Steve said, redoubling his efforts to wrap Bucky up in his arms. “We both still just a couple foul mouthed kids from Brooklyn. I’m not upset about it.” 

“Steve I’m trying to be an adult here,” Bucky griped, pushing away from the warmth of his boyfriend’s hold. “If you’re really leaving I don’t want there to be shit festering between us, you know?” 

“I get it, but I’m not upset about it Buck, I promise,” Steve said, picking up his clothes from where they were spread across the floor and dumping them into a pile on the bed next to his suitcase. 

“I... “ Bucky hesitated and then visibly steeled himself before going on. “You weren’t exactly wrong either, when you said that I didn’t like that it was Namor, specifically. It should make it better that we knew him in the war. 

“If I were the kind of man I want to be I’d be fucking relieved it was Namor because he always had our backs in the war and everything.

“And it really isn’t that I don’t trust you because I know you’d never actually let him touch you but.... I think about you, alone with oily motherfucker drives me crazy. That’s not why I’m so against this stupid plan,” Bucky added sternly. “But I know I’ve been acting kind of like a jealous lunkhead since that whole thing on the beach.” Bucky eyed Steve critically, trying to tell if this was going to be an issue between them. 

“Oh, um, well,” Steve paused in his careful refolding of his shirts to rub the back of his neck. He knew he was blushing all the way down his chest but he couldn’t help it. Just the thought of how grabby and possessive Bucky had been for the past two weeks was already getting Steve a little hot under the collar. 

Bucky came up behind him and pressed a little kiss to the blush right below Steve’s hairline. “I kind of thought you liked that,” Bucky admitted in a whisper. He scraped his teeth over the nape of Steve’s neck and Steve couldn’t help the shiver that forced down his spine or the breathy little “Oh.” 

Bucky’s hands squeezed Steve’s hips more tightly than would normally be comfortable. He pulled Steve back so they were pressed together, the front Bucky’s jeans grinding against the back of Steve’s khakis obscenely. 

“You like it when I hold you down? Hmm?” Bucky asked, sneaking his hands up Steve’s sides while Steve’s arms hung limp and useless. “You like it when I fuck you ‘til you cry and whisper with it baby? Put those pretty bruises all over your neck and make you mine?” 

Steve moaned as Bucky roughly took hold of his pecs, squeezing them together like they were proper tits and thumbing at his nipples. “Yeah,” Bucky breathed hotly against Steve’s ear, scraping his teeth across a tender earlobe. “I know all your buttons.” Bucky emphasized this point by abandoning one of Steve’s tits to reach down and pop open the button of his khakis while Steve whined and squirmed in his grip. 

Bucky shoved him without warning and Steve wound up falling so his chest was pressed to the bed and legs were dangling over the side, his toes gripping in the carpet to maintain his balance. 

“Gonna give you a little something to remember me by when you’re gone baby,” Bucky crooned, yanking Steve’s khakis and boxers down in one pull and bullying them off. He fell to his knees behind Steve and grabbed both perfect globes of Steve’s ass in hand. 

He spread Steve’s cheeks and took a good look at Steve’s shy pink hole while Steve attempted to bury his face even deeper in the sheets as his arousal tinged with a heady kind of shame. Only Bucky could ever make him feel that way, be safe enough that Steve could be like this with him. 

By the time Bucky was done reminding him of that fact, all of Steve’s clothes, including the ones he’d been wearing, and the suitcase he was meant to be packing, were in a disarray on the floor. 

* * *

“It’s only for a week or two,” Steve said reassuringly, loading the last of his bags into the back of the discrete black Secret Service car. The president had actually called to order Steve, as a diplomat, to take the car and the accompanying security detail when it came time to go meet the Atlantian contingent. 

The whole thing made Steve feel a little silly, but Angela Diego was a hell of a president and commander in chief so he wasn’t about to contradict a direct order from her. 

Now that it was here though, now that it was time to leave, all Steve could feel was a sweeping icy dread. He had to keep his game face on, he knew that. But pretending he was actually optimistic about this trip was wearing him thin. 

“Two?!” Bucky shouted, more irate than ever. A couple of the Secret Service guys who had been covertly maintaining a perimeter looked at each other and then looked away. No one was about to get in the middle of a super soldier lover’s quarrel. “That fishy sonofabitch said five days. Five,” Bucky said, enunciating the word slowly. “Not six, and definitely not two weeks.” 

Steve shot Bucky an unimpressed look, trying his hardest to pretend like he didn’t agree. 

“Realistically, Bucky, neither of us knows how long this is going to take. Namor isn’t actually stupid, no matter what he lets people think. His people are in increasing danger from undersea pollution and testing. They aren’t going to stop threatening global powers until there’s some kind of binding resolution to protect their environment. 

“Honestly, I would probably admire the stand they’re making if they weren’t threatening the lives and welfares of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.” 

“That’s a pretty big if,” Bucky muttered darkly. 

“And that’s why I’m not going down there to make friends,” Steve said, panicking a little as his voice cracked on ‘down there’. Bucky didn’t seem to notice though, or at least, not the exact words that threw him. 

Steve slammed the trunk shut just to have something else to do other than look at that sad pleading expression on Bucky’s face. 

“Look,” Steve said, taking a deep breath and stepping back towards Bucky, “I know this isn’t what you want. You know this isn’t what I want. We both know why I have to do it anyway. So for once in our goddamn lives, can we please not fight about things that are out of our control?” 

Bucky’s eyes flicked over Steve’s face, taking in the exhausted droop of his eyes and frown that was pressing his lips down, the set of his shoulders weighted, awkward, and uncomfortable. 

“That’s a first,” Bucky mumbled, reaching out to brush his flesh fingers softly over Steve’s cheek like he might not be welcome. “Steve Rogers not wanting to fight? I know why I’m fucked up, but what’s gotten into you?” 

All Steve could think was that he was failing. The cracks were showing and Bucky was beginning to see through them. He couldn’t let Bucky see how broken he really was. After everything Bucky had been through, Bucky needed Steve to be the strong one and how could Steve let him down? What he’d lived through was absolute child’s play in comparison. 

Steve leaned into Bucky’s touch, absorbing his warmth, relishing in the heartbreaking softness of his hands, which had done so much violence. 

The metal arm, which had slid up Steve’s thick arm to cup his triceps, was covered in the synthetic sleeve Bruce and Tony had designed. Steve should have noticed sooner. Bucky wasn’t the most difficult guy to see though most of the time. He only wore the sleeve when he was undercover, incognito, or insecure. 

“I’m just feeling a little stressed with this whole thing,” Steve said easily, swallowing back the mental image of miles of water over his head, his limp body sinking down into the inky nevermore, floating down toward the silt so far beneath the surface that his ribs would be crushed in like an empty can of coke. Frozen, abandoned, and forgotten. 

“What about you though?” he asked, caressing Bucky’s stubbled cheek with his thumb. “Still worried about Namor?” Steve asked with a saucy little grin. That did the trick. Bucky’s eyes heated with the memory of their last conversation on that particular topic. 

“I’m worried about a lot of things, but not that,” Bucky said confidently, stealing a quick kiss. A Secret Service agent coughed pointedly and looked at his watch but neither of them paid him any mind. “I’m worried that you’ll trust that asshat even though we don’t know Namor anymore and we haven’t in a long goddamn time.” Bucky pressed a finger to Steve’s lips to forestall his protest in the name of their old friend. 

“He didn’t take any shortcuts like we did Steve, He got to the here-and-now the old fashioned way. Last time we saw him he was still just a punk-ass kid, just like the rest of us where. Now…” Bucky trailed off and let his finger slip from Steve’s lips, over his chin to curl under his jaw. “I just want you to be careful.” 

Steve took hold of Bucky’ shoulders. “I will be,” he promised sincerely. He took a deep breath while he still could and felt the firmness of the ground beneath his feet. “I know what my mission is,” Steve said, as much to himself as to Bucky. “I’m not there to catch up with an old friend. I’m there to insure the peace and prosperity of the international community.” 

“No trusting anyone,” Bucky said. 

“Got it,” Steve said, quirking an amused little smile that only just barely hid his mounting dread as he considered this mission. Everything he had packed in his stupid waterproof suitcase felt like another shovelful of dirt he heaved as he dug his own grave. 

"And you tell that lecherous fucker I said no funny business,” Bucky said, only half-joking. Steve gathered both of Bucky’s hands in his own and kissed each of his fingertips down the line, paying equal attention to those that were flesh and those covered in the deceptively flesh-like sleeve. 

“Who do you think you’re talking to, asshole?” Steve murmured lovingly against the ragged edges of Bucky’s chewed off fingernails. 

“A big dumb puppy dog with more cock than brains,” Bucky rejoined playfully. Steve's face heated as some of the agents gave the two of them increasingly judgemental looks from behind their sunglasses. Joke was on them though, because Steve happened to know that this conversation was technically classified Top Secret. So outside of an extremely select circle of high-ranking government officials, these guys couldn't breathe a word of what was said. And what did Steve really care what the Chief of Staff thought of his and Bucky's raunchy jokes? 

“Well, you know Buck,” Steve said with a little more of his old Brooklyn drawl than usual, “considering the size of my cock that’s not exactly difficult.” Bucky laughed, shoving Steve’s face away as his boyfriend grinned at him. 

“Captain Rogers!” one of the Secret Service agents gasped, scandalized as any Catholic grandmother Steve had ever known. “We’re going to miss our rendezvous,” the agent said primly. 

“You heard the man,” Bucky said, straining his good humor. “Get going.” Steve leaned in to a too brief kiss and walked to the passenger side of the black car with the same grim determination he felt before the more grisly missions. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I missed two weeks worth of updates. Why? Because I am a flawed human individual. Sorry guys.
> 
> Trigger warning in end description.

“Namor,” Steve said, trying not to sound quite as resigned as he really was as he walked down the sandy beach towards his old friend. While Steve had been forced to accept an entire brigade of minders Namor seemed to be alone.

“Steve,” Namor answered back, casting his eyes over the secret service agents. “What, no Bucky today? Your man doesn’t fear for your virtue with a notorious Lothario such as myself?”

Steve snorted, trying to shake some of the goddamn sand off his luggage. “Notorious loser maybe.”

“That hurts me, Steve, truly,” Namor said, throwing his hand over his heart. “Is that any way to conduct diplomatic affairs?” Steve felt a brief flash of guilt at that which he viciously buried down. Namor wasn’t even being serious. Steve didn’t even want to be there. He was doing the best he could given the circumstances and he hadn’t irreparably fucked anything up. Yet.

He couldn’t help glancing at the Secret Service agents out of the corner of his eye though. Every detail of this conversation would be reported back to the White House and the NSA and the Pentagon if it wasn’t already being transmitted somehow. He didn’t want everyone to think he was already failing his mission. 

“Where’s the ship?” Steve asked, trying to steer the conversation back into a less diplomatically fraught direction. 

“Ship?” Namor asked, looking at Steve like he was crazy. “We are a water-dwelling people, Steve. We don’t require clunky, noisy, slow tin cans to move from one place to another underneath the surface. Frankly, you’re shockingly lucky that our city even has open air. Otherwise, you might have to go in one of those ridiculous metal suits like Howard’s pup.”

“Namor,” Steve said slowly, letting his luggage fall over back into the sand. “If there’s no ship, exactly how do you think I’m going to get all the way to this miraculously oxygenated city of yours?” Namor smirked like the asshole he really was and waved his hand at the water, which froze over in his wake. There was a circular platform of ice several inches thick floating just offshore. Steve’s heart sank.

“This is a method we have cultivated for transporting our injured and dying,” Namor said snottily. I will form an air bubble around you and move the ice platform with my mind through the water. It’s very impressive.” Namor made a gesture, this one of impatience as he waited for Steve to climb aboard and compliment his friend’s watery prowess. 

Steve was frozen on the beach. 

“Has it occurred to you, Namor, that if you lose concentration or, I don’t know, get eaten by a shark, while I’m on that thing I’ll drown?” Steve said. Namor just laughed. In fact, he laughed so hard he bent over and clutched at his knees. Steve failed to see how his own potential death was so goddamn funny.

“Steve,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “The creatures of the sea do my bidding. Eaten by a shark. That would be like you accidentally decapitating yourself with your own shield. Which would be funny, but also a little sad,” Namor added, as if that point needed clarifying. Steve scowled at the sea king and crossed his arms, making it very clear that he wasn’t going to leave dry land until his safety had been assured.

Namor sighed, very put upon. Steve thought, uncharitably, that for a grown man who had thrown a massive temper tantrum and gotten exactly what he wanted, Namor wasn’t handling the situation with as much grace as he could have.

“Of course, if I lose concentration the bubble will disintegrate and the ice will float to the surface. But it would take something quite extreme to usurp my concentration thusly. Something like, say, an attack from your undersea goons? One of your missiles perhaps?” As Namor said this he glared quite pointedly at the Secret Service agents who were calm as beefeaters in the wake of the sea king’s wrath. Why they couldn’t be so calm when Steve and Bucky were making dick jokes a few hours ago was anyone’s guess, Steve thought grumpily. 

“Man up and get on the fucking ice floe Steve,” Namor snapped, rolling his eyes for extra seventh-grade-peer-pressure measure. “You drowned once already and that ended up just fine. I don't like to be kept waiting.”

“Oh, fuck you Namor,” Steve said, gathering his bags and moving towards the platform even though he wanted to do nothing less. YOU’RE GOING TO DIE, his mind kept screeching. YOU’RE GOING TO DIE AND NO ONE WILL FIND YOU THIS TIME. YOU’RE GOING TO DROWN ALONE IN THE COLD AND THE DARK.

The ice didn’t even rock when Steve stepped on it. It was a little disconcerting how much more stable it was than the sand, the actual dry ground that Steve was leaving. Of course, intellectually he knew that was all the Atlantian’s freaky mind powers, but still. It creeped him out. 

“Gentlemen,” Namor said to the Secret Service agents with a little smirk.

“Have a safe trip, Captain Rogers, Sir,” the lead agent said to Steve without so much as glancing in Namor’s direction. “We will be here to meet you on the beach at the appointed time.”

“Thanks, Diggle,” Steve said, waving at the agents and feeling a bit foolish when no one waved back. 

The ice floe sped forward into the deeper water and sank even as Steve clutched at his luggage and shook trying not to piss himself. He had marched into literal war zones and not felt a fraction of the fear he felt as the water closed in over his head. He couldn’t help holding his breath even though he could see that the air bubble had formed around him. He knew it was there but it still felt like….

Namor’s head poked into the air bubble, his elbows resting on the ice ledge as he stopped swimming and let the ice pull him along with Steve. His hair was dry, Steve noticed. So weird. 

“Do you want to take the scenic route?” Namor asked casually. He was so much less of an asshole when it was just the two of them. At any other time, Steve might wonder if that behavior stemmed from some deep insecurity. His mind was too full of static to wonder jack shit. Steve didn’t really feel like he was inside his body at all. Things were happening. The water was whooshing by all around him. None of it felt real. It was just a carbon copy of a dream.

“Steve?” Namor asked. “Scenic route? I don’t think there’s a coral reef on the way but I know where there might be some whales, maybe some schools of fish we can play with. What do you say?” 

“Maybe next time,” Steve’s mouth said placidly. Steve was no longer in residence. His body seemed to be clutching its knees to its chest. There was enough room in the bubble to stand but it wouldn’t do that. Sitting was simpler. Simple was good. Easy. 

“Your loss,” Namor said with a shrug. He shoved off the ice floe and slid back into the water with all the grace of a creature born there.

The rest of the trip happened. Steve didn’t remember it. He couldn’t have said how long it took. He just held himself tightly and tried to convince himself he would be able to move if he tried.

* * *

Steve stumbled as he stepped off the ice platform. He vaguely recalled that Namor had shouted to him that they had arrived. There had been some kind of magical barrier that Atlantean priests in vibrant green wetsuits had waved them through. But he didn’t really expect his aching joints to actually move. He felt rusted out as if the only way to become human again was to lay him out in the sun and bake him in oil. 

The ice melted into the dry ground the second Steve’s feet were off of it. Namor was several paces ahead of him, jaunting off through the city and calling over his shoulder to Steve. Frankly, Steve’s brain was still running cold, too slow to catch up with the Atlantean king’s words.

There was a deep richness to the cerulean blue of the water that surrounded them. The hypnotic swaying of the seaweed and the kelp just outside the glass dome made everything seem so peaceful, so much easier to let go. Steve didn’t force himself to think or feel anything as he stared out at it. He was dead, and the dead were frozen in place, things to be acted on or forgotten.

He wondered if he’d ever really woken up if everything- Bucky and the sex shop beneath their apartment, the Avengers and the civil war, and now Namor- was just some rabid fantasy of his slowly decaying brain.

“Ah yes,” Namor said, having looped back in a huff when Steve hadn’t caught up to him as he strode toward the palace. “I see you are enamored with the exquisite beauty of my home. This is only to be expected. Surface dwellers do not know true beauty until they have been beneath the sea,” Namor boasted. They stood together for a moment, each watching the sway of the kelp and the pull of their own thoughts.

“Like the hair of a beautiful lady, isn’t it?” Namor asked Steve throwing an arm around Steve. Steve started, looking away from the life he could see past his reflection in the glass and letting Namor steer him none-too-gently away from the glass... 

In a way being trapped under the dome in Atlantis was a lot like being trapped in a snow globe. It was so picturesque that the horror of being confined, contained, and suffocating was just a bitter pill hidden in a spoonful of sugar. Just how Steve’s mama used to sneak him his medicine. 

Steve snuck another glance back at the wall of the dome. Shadows and visions passed outside, half hidden sea creatures circling through the kelp fields. Currents carried life past him, but he was static, a prisoner who had closed the cell door behind himself and settled in for a good long bout of suffering. He knew, intellectually, that Atlantis was about as far away from the scene of the Valkyrie as one could get. It didn’t make him feel any less buried.

They walked for several minutes, random citizens stopping and bowing as Namor passed, never once raising their eyes to Steve. Namor took a sharp turn to the left then, and squeezed Steve between two buildings, pulling him out on the other side just in time for a colorful wave to twist its way toward the kelp.

“Do you see that?” Namor asked, pointing to the school of fish strolling carelessly past the glass. Steve nodded woodenly and waited for Namor to say more. “In the coral reefs, you can find schools of every color. Fish more beautiful than human dancers and ten times as graceful. This is what we must protect, Steve, as much as my people. There is no one under this dome who wants to live in a dead world.”

“I’m with you,” Steve found himself saying. “I have been spearheading responsible climate change policy for years. I spoke at G-20, I lobbied for the Paris Accords. You don’t need to convince me.”

“Steve, my friend,” Namor said, clapping Steve on the shoulder gently. “I mean this with the greatest respect. You are one of the finest warriors I’ve ever known, but you have always been, and still are a complete moron when it comes to governance. You have been a political puppet for most of your life. Maybe now you get to choose which tunes you dance to, but the puppeteer's strings are still dangling from your impressively muscled limbs.” Namor let his hand drift down to Steve’s biceps, squeezing appreciatively. 

“And you’re not even flexing,” Namor said, sounding genuinely impressed. Steve colored and ducked his head to hide the bright red blush, which only made Namor laugh louder.

“You know, Fox News actually took a very similar line when they did a piece on me a few weeks ago. About me being a puppet for the liberal media, I mean, not, you know.” Steve rolled his eyes at Namor’s exaggerated leer. “That was a nice special to watch with my friends,” Steve said bitterly.

At the time he hadn’t even realized the thing had upset him so much. It had been kind of funny, almost. He had laughed along with Tony’s running commentary at the time and actually enjoyed himself. The sinking feeling of dread in his stomach had become such an old and well-accustomed companion by that point that he barely even noticed how it twisted and writhed with a good feeling from the fear mongers on the channel. 

The other Avengers had thrown popcorn at the screen and bowed theatrically. It had been nice, a kind of solidarity that Steve didn’t often feel. He had never really let himself think about how much it had bothered him until he was here, standing next to Namor. And what did that say about him, that he couldn’t even see the sick self-loathing parts of himself until he was alone with someone who may or may not even have his best interests at heart?

Steve never had to worry about sounding like a jerk when he was talking to Namor, for obvious reasons. It was one of the main selling points that kept Steve invested in their friendship despite the many hardships that stood in its way.

“They said I was a ventriloquist’s dummy,” Steve recalled vaguely when the silence had stretched on for a second too long.

“Well,” Namor said slowly, savoring his own words. “I hope they were right, Steve. Because I would still very much enjoy shoving my hand up your ass and making you open your mouth for me.”

Steve barked out a hysterical peel of laughter, unable to restrain his shock at Namor’s words despite the fact that he probably should have seen that one coming. He even caught sight of a cocky little grin from Namor through the tears suddenly clinging to his long lashes as he full-belly laughed.

“You better not let Bucky catch you spouting shit like that,” Steve said, wiping at the tears leaking from his eyes. The hysteria that had been screaming across his nerves ever since he first walked to the beach to be spirited away by Namor was still jangling across his skin. The laughter had given it an outlet but hadn’t dampened or disarmed it.

“Ah,” Namor said, “Barnes. He is an excellent soldier and a first class friend. I can’t help that he’s so easy to bother, though. In truth, I’m doing him a service. Imagine what would happen if someone who was actually his enemy caught on to this weakness of his. Really he should be thanking me for pointing it out and desensitizing him.” Steve smacked Namor’s chest with the back of his hand and rolled his eyes in lieu of answering that load of bullshit.

“While I believe that we could probably fuck better than any two other beings on this planet, vigorously, and for hours, I’m not seriously interested in pursuing you in that manner,” Namor clarified, taking Steve’s elbow in a firm hold and leading him away from the observation point where he had been staring into the inescapable vast darkness of the ocean. “It would lead to too many complications. Including Barnes attempting to reclaim his role of assassin, I am sure.”

Steve grimaced, trying to imagine how much worse Bucky’s possessive jealousy would be if Namor really put his all into getting Steve into bed. Not that Steve would go, obviously. He would rather eat his service sidearm than betray Bucky, everyone knew that.

But the thought of Bucky enraged like that, the way his eyes would light with fire, manhandling Steve checking him all over for signs that someone had trespassed on what was his….

Steve tugged at his collar, hoping Namor didn’t notice. 

“Had I really wanted to seduce you I would already have you writhing, pressed up against the glass wall of the palace so that all passerby could see how I took you. They would probably quite enjoy watching you smear yourself all over the glass in front of them. And I would certainly enjoy thrusting home the point that you were _mine_ in front of all Atlantis.” Steve’s face flooded a volcanic red as Namor went on. He couldn’t help but picture the event in his mind’s eye as his friend went on in that same careless tone of voice.

He was Bucky’s and Bucky’s only and always. But the thought of letting Namor take him that way- of anyone daring to so publicly claim ownership of all that Steve was- well that made him a little hot and bothered. He couldn’t help it. It wasn't like he would ever in a million years want that in real life. But the thought of it, followed closely by the thought of Bucky finding them somehow, Namor still thrusting lazily inside of Steve even though he’d already come. Semen leaking out of Steve’s slick, used hole, and drooling down the inside of his thighs…

Bucky would be thunderous. Murderous. Namor would escape somehow (this wasn’t that kind of fantasy, Steve told himself firmly, thoroughly disgusted with himself and his runaway thoughts).

So, yes, Namor would escape and he would be alone with Bucky then, in the tattered remains of his clothes, shamefaced from being used by a man he didn’t belong to. And Bucky would have to teach him a lesson. Take him over his knee maybe, or... and God Steve would _beg_ him for it, beg Bucky for anything he'd be willing to give him. 

He was blindsided with a massive turn on that he’d never even considered before. Several of them in quick succession, in fact. Namor really was a bastard. He was laughing at Steve, delighted by his friend’s reaction to his words.

“But as I said,” Namor repeated himself, undeniably cheerful, “You are not my intended conquest. And if you have need of a more liberal and adventurous society for your experimentations with Barnes, please understand that I’m fairly sure my people would enjoy watching you be fucked even if it wasn’t my own glorious self who was doing the fucking.”

“Thanks, Namor,” Steve said sarcastically. “You’re a real pal. I can’t understand why Bucky wants to beat your face into your ass, really.” Steve couldn’t ever bring Bucky to Atlantis, he knew that. There was no way he’d be able to keep his ruined nerves from the one person on the planet who had known him longest and best.

Steve knew himself to be an idiot but he wasn’t an absolute fool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PTWs: Steve fantasizes about some rough, potentially dub-con cheating involving Namor, Bucky and himself. Steve also heavily dissociates. 
> 
>  
> 
> Kudos and comments are thoroughly encouraged!!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! 
> 
> Life happened.

“It’s been six months of this Steve,” Bucky whined, throwing himself on top of Steve on the couch. Steve sighed, petting the back of Bucky’s head in what he hoped was a soothing manner.

“Negotiations are at a critical point now,” Steve said, by rote president’s words. She’d dragged him into the Oval Office last week, promising to talk about promoting a charity that helped vets’ kids afford college. In her defense, they had talked about the program for all of ten seconds. Just long enough for her to assure Steve it would have her full support before she pressed him about Namor. Again.

Steve hadn’t known that being an ambassador would be so exhausting. He kept telling everyone the same things and no one listened because it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

If anyone back in 1938 had told Steve that one day he’d be dodging calls from the Oval Office he would have laughed himself sick. Literally.

His two previous trips to Atlantis had mostly involved Namor trying to guilt him into fighting harder for the preservation of sea life and, by extension, the Atlantian people. As if Steve wasn’t doing his best already. He didn't want to go back under the ocean but they both knew that's exactly what he would be doing tomorrow. Bucky was less and less happy every time Steve left.

 

* * *

 

Steve was very much not looking forward to the party which Namor insisted on calling, “One of my massive balls,” with that signature double eyebrow raise and an irritating little grin. Despite Steve’s protests that his usual suit would be perfectly appropriate, given his role as an international ambassador, Namor had custom made traditional Atlantian garb delivered to his room for the occasion. One look at what he was expected to wear made Steve blush to the roots of his hair and pray for some doom bots to fall out of the sky so he’d have some excuse to leave and never return to Namor’s undersea torture palace.

The pants rested low on Steve’s his when he tried them on. The gold embellishments that cupped his groin only served to draw the eye immediately to where the clinging teal fabric gripped him there. The gold swirled down his thighs, highlighting his quads and glutes before disappearing into the matching knee-high boots. There was nothing to cover his torso except for a pair of curved golden shoulder coverings that tied around his neck and called attention to his pecs and biceps. It was the most indecent thing Steve had ever worn in his life.

He couldn’t help feeling embarrassed, even alone in his room in Atlantis, looking into the mirror as he tried it on for the first time. It looked like something out an Avengers porn parody (the fact that those existed, and that he had learned they existed because the thin young man who played “Steve Rogered” came up to him on the street and asked him to sign a DVD, was still pretty traumatizing). As if mystically sensing Steve’s embarrassment was one of his powers, Namor knocked on the door.

“One minute!” Steve called, diving for his bed and grabbing the sheet off of it to cover himself with. “Come in,” he said when he looked like Casper the ghost in training. Namor strolled in and looked judgmentally down at Steve.

“It can’t be that bad,” he said dryly. “Just show me.”

“Absolutely not!” Steve said, feeling his the flush on his face travel down his neck and then further. He clutched the sheet to himself like a maiden aunt’s pearls. Namor rolled his eyes so hard Steve thought the King might burst a blood vessel.

“Look at what I’m wearing, Steve,” Namor said dryly, waving a hand to the lime green speedo and knee-high gold boots he was wearing with a sleeveless shirt that had a V neck so low it actually plunged past his belly button. “This is the culturally appropriate traditional garb of my people. Are you trying to insinuate it’s somehow shameful?”

“No,” Steve rejoined. “I’m trying to insinuate that you sent me this outfit so you could ogle my nipples though.”

“Well, to be fair you have great tits,” Namor said, shrugging without an ounce of shame. “But mostly I thought you would want something actually attractive to wear because your boo bear is going to be here tonight. I’m sure he can be convinced to fuck you in your drab dry-lander attire since he obviously has been before, but as your friend, I thought I would help you out.” Steve rubbed at his temples, feeling a headache coming on.

“Bucky isn’t coming to Atlantis,” he said, as if to himself. If Bucky came he would see that Steve wasn’t as okay as he kept promising he was. He’d get angry and start yelling and then if it were anything like the time that Wakandan treasury secretary grabbed Steve’s ass there would be all the shooting and the screaming…. Steve didn’t want that. He wanted to see Bucky, desperately, but only when he wasn’t trapped under a few thousand feet of crushing blue water.

“I didn’t want all those stuffed shirts clogging up my city so I decided to add a few people to the guest list,” Namor said with a smirk. “I did this out of the goodness of my heart but no thanks are necessary. Even if Barnes doesn’t fuck you against one of the many glass walls of the palace so that I can comfortably watch while drinking flavorful alcohol, it will still have been worth it for the look on his face when you walk out in _that_.”

“I’m not going anywhere in this,” Steve hissed, gathering up his clothes while clutching the sheet to his body. “Bucky can’t be here. He can’t.” Namor frowned at Steve, his sly grin slipping for once. He took a step forward and then stopped.

“Steve,” he said, and then fell silent a moment. “Steve, you’re my friend. If something is wrong just tell me. Your comfort is important.” Namor looked constipated like the words were being ground out of him. He was honestly trying. Steve sighed, feeling suddenly that he weighed a thousand tons. He dumped his clothes on the bed and then sat down next to them, burying his head in his hands.

“I don’t think I can be here,” he confessed brokenly. “Namor, now that the treaty is signed I… I can’t do this anymore.” There were tears running down Steve’s face. He kept his eyes covered with this hands, breathing slowly and evenly and praying that his friend wouldn’t notice. Namor sat down heavily next to his friend and threw his arm around Steve’s shoulders. Steve let a breath shudder out of him as he wiped his face.

“You are a mighty warrior and an admirable friend. I thank you for your service and I release you,” Namor said. “It was never my intention to cause you pain.”

“That can’t possibly be true when you’re a pain in the ass every day,” Steve joked shakily. The relief was threatening to overwhelm him. Namor snorted, removing his arm from around Steve.

“I thought you would be pleased that I invited Barnes,” the King said. “I know that I have taken you away from him for weeks at a time. It was essential for the survival and well-being of my people, but still, I know that you did this because I asked. It was not your fight. You deserve a reward.”  Steve looked up the ceiling and sighed, wiping away the last of his tears.

“Namor you didn’t ask you threatened global coastal destruction. That’s not asking. Asking is a thing people do where the other person can say no,” Steve explained with extreme patience.

“I thought that was sex?” Namor said with a grin.

“You think everything is sex,” Steve said dryly. “You’d fuck a cotton-poly blend if you thought you could.”

“There’s a really good joke about a young man’s sock drawer in there somewhere,” Namor said thoughtfully, “But alas, we don’t have time for it. We will be late for the reception if we don’t leave immediately.” Steve stiffened all over, extremely aware that he was still wearing his Atlantian outfit underneath the sheet. He glanced at the clock desperately.

“Reception? The ball doesn’t start for another hour,” he said, panicking.

“Yes,” Namor explained, rolling his eyes, “But our guests of honor are arriving now and I can hardly meet the international delegation without the international ambassador, now can I?” Steve stood abruptly, pacing towards the closet where his suits were hanging.

“Get out. I need to change,” he ordered Namor over his shoulder.

“There’s no time,” Namor bit back. “I’m really not joking Steve. We can’t leave them standing there, the treaty isn’t fully ratified until I sign the damn thing. If the outfit bothers you so much you can come straight back here after we all shake hands and change before the ball. If it soothes you please know that I have requested no photographs or videos be taken. And in Atlantis when I request something it is not asking.” Steve sighed. He had given up his dignity before in the name of his country’s well being. At least this time it wouldn’t be captured on film, he thought. Deciding to rip off the band-aid and get it over with, Steve tossed the sheet onto his bed and crossed his arms over his pecs, waiting for Namor’s leering and dirty comments.

“We’re going to be late,” Namor said dryly, turning away from Steve without even glancing at his bulging biceps or the fabric lovingly cupping his junk. Steve squared his shoulders and followed Namor down the hall. None of the Atlantian’s they passed even seemed to notice his new outfit, aside from a few quick appreciative glances. It was true that they were all dressed similarly, but Steve, who still woke up some mornings thinking it was the 1940’s, didn’t think he could ever really get used to such attire.

The stopped at the edge of the glass dome that surrounded the city, standing on one of the tall, straight bridges that rose over the lower streets. Outside in the dark water, Steve could see the long grey shape of the USS _Intrepid_ , a nuclear submarine which had been tasked with transporting the dignitaries. A little yellow pod, some kind of mini-sub, was released from the larger vessel and began propelling itself slowly toward the dome.

“Hey,” Steve said suddenly. “Why couldn’t I have come down here in a submarine? Why I have I been freezing my balls off on those stupid ice floes the entire time?”

“I thought it was funny,” Namor said shrugging. “And I didn’t trust them with the coordinates to my city until negotiations were complete.” Steve narrowed his eyes at his friend but bit back a bitter rejoinder about the number of panic attacks Namor’s sick sense of humor had cost him. The pod landed in the decompression chamber while Steve, Namor, and the other Atlantian dignitaries waited for the water to slowly drain and the pressurization to normalize.

It wasn’t long before the door of the mini-sub opened, a little step ladder descending so that the nearly 30 passengers could disembark. Steve’s enhanced vision caught Bucky the second he stepped foot of the sub. He was dressed to the nines in a sharp Armani suit and polished Italian dress shoes. His hair was in that half-up half-down man bun thing that simultaneously reminded Steve of Jon Snow and made him want to jump Bucky’s bones.

The problem was that Bucky had enhanced vision too and he also saw what Steve was wearing. He actually shoved the French President out of his way as he stalked toward the door that sealed the pressurization chamber off from the city itself. Steve blushed, looking down as he rubbed the back of his neck. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he muttered to Namor, who only snorted looking unconcerned.

“Friend Barnes!” Namor greeted Bucky, who had shouldered his way past the Atlantian soldiers and was stalking towards where Steve and Namor with the same lethal-predator murder strut from his Winter Soldier days. Bucky didn’t even respond to Namor, though. He had eyes for Steve and only Steve.

He stopped stalking forward only when he was right inside Steve’s personal space, his eyes starved and enraged both. Bucky opened his mouth then closed it without saying anything and licked his lips. “Have you been wearing this the entire time?” Bucky asked, pained. “You packed normal clothes, I know you did. I saw you pack normal clothes.”

“Buck, down here these are normal clothes,” Steve said, not sure why he was letting the fiction that he had chosen to dress like this continue. Possibly he had been spending too much time with Namor. Bucky looked around for the first time at that, his hackles lowing just a little bit as he realized that was true.

“You look cold,” Bucky said eventually, still sounding like someone had stabbed him in the kidney. He shrugged out of his suit jacket and threw it over Steve’s wide chest. Steve sighed, shrugging off the jacket and putting it on properly. It was so well tailored to Bucky that it pulled terribly on Steve around the shoulders and was much too wide at the waist but at least his nipples would be covered when he shook hands with all of the world’s leaders.

The international dignitaries were, fortunately, too professional to mention Steve’s wardrobe choices when they shook his hand but few of them could contain their raised eyebrows. Steve shuddered to think what kind of an impression he was making.

As soon as the initial pleasantries were done with Namor leaned into Steve’s ear, making Bucky bristle. All Namor said was, “You and your lover can go ‘change clothes’ now if you like.” Steve nodded, blushing and reached out for Bucky’s hand. Bucky immediately laced their fingers together, glaring at Namor. Steve actually had to pull to get Bucky to break his stare and follow him away from the others down the streets that would lead to Steve’s room in the palace.

“I know I can’t tell you what to wear or how to dress,” Bucky said as soon as the door to Steve’s room closed behind them. “But this is going a bit far, Steve. Are you trying to give me an aneurysm?” Bucky threw himself down on Steve’s bed, throwing his elbow over his eyes. “Christ. I can’t believe I nearly popped a stiff one in front of the President. She’ll never look at me the same again.”  Steve rolled his eyes crawling up on the bed to straddle his lover.

“She fought for you after the fall of Shield Buck, even when most of the other senators wanted your head on a plate and he re-election is at stake. I doubt there’s much you could do to change her good opinion of you. I’ve missed you,” he added more quietly, reaching out to cup Bucky’s cheek after Bucky uncovered his face and let his arm flop out to his side.

“I missed you too, baby,” Bucky said, covering Steve’s hand with his own. “I-,” Bucky let out a long breath and then looked back up at the ceiling. “You know I get jealous. And I try not to be that guy that everyone rolls their eyes at behind his back, you know? The one who gets stupid and controlling because he’s insecure. I don’t want to do that to you.”

“You couldn’t if you tried, Bucky,” Steve said reassuringly. He rubbed his thumb gently over Bucky’s cheekbone.

“Okay,” Bucky said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, Then I gotta tell you we can’t do this anymore.” Steve’s heart plummeted like a stone.

“W-what?” he stuttered.

“Coming down here makes you fucking miserable. You think I can’t tell? You get jittery as hell for days before you leave and when you get back you can barely… Steve, baby, I know you don’t want to talk about it. I been waitin’ for you to come to me. I been patient, but we can’t do this anymore. You gotta tell Namor you’re done here. You got the treaty signed and that’s it. You’re done. No more. Because I gotta be honest with you, I can’t watch this slowly destroy you and I can’t wait around for weeks at a time back home wondering what kind of Spanks Namor’s going to try to trot you around in next.” Bucky blew out a long breath pushing himself up on his elbows and looking Steve full in his stunned face for the first time since the conversation began. “Can we be done with this now? Please?” Bucky begged.

“We’re done,” Steve said numbly. “I told Namor before you got here. Buck, when you get back on that sub after this stupid ceremony I’m gonna be with you. We’ll go home together and then I’m not leaving again.” Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s tiny waist and buried his face in Steve’s cleavage, holding on as tight as he could.

“Good,” he mumbled into Steve’s supple flesh. Steve ran his hands tenderly through Bucky’s hair, trying to think of something he could say to cheer his lover up.

“You know this is the only time I’ve worn Atlantian clothes,” Steve confessed. “Namor sent them for the ceremony and I tried them on but then I got distracted and didn’t have time to change. I never really meant to go out in this. I can’t even believe you actually thought I was wearing this stuff the whole time.”

“A jealous man is not a rational man!” Bucky defended, looking up from Steve’s chest indignantly. His hands slid down from Steve’s waist to clutch at Steve’s ass. “Though I have to admit, the Atlantians might be onto something with all this. You gonna keep the outfit?” Bucky asked with a gleam in his eye. Steve laughed, remembering the last time Bucky had asked him that, and the hours of intense sex which had followed, rather fondly.

“You like it?” Steve asked coyly, batting his long eyelashes

“I like _you,_ ” Bucky replied playfully, stealing a kiss before Steve could respond. Steve moaned into the kiss, grinding his hips down on Bucky’s lap and feeling the hot, hard line of his lover’s erection already pressing back.

“You eager?” Steve asked, pulling back and biting his lower lip the way that drove Bucky crazy. “You wanna fuck me?”

“Don’t have the patience,” Bucky growled, flipping Steve over on his back and tugging at the Atlantian trousers, trying to find their closure. Steve laughed again,  helping him out until the thin fabric was pulled down to his knees and Bucky could get his hot mouth around Steve’s aching cock. That shut Steve up in short order.

Bucky pulled off after a few minutes of pure bliss, working his hand over the shaft and placing teasing little kisses on the head. “As soon as you come I’m going to strip you bare,” Bucky growled. “Then I’m gonna hustle your glorious naked ass into the ensuite I saw. I’m  gonna get all wet, scrubbed clean, then I’m gonna eat your ass until you cry, until you beg me to fuck you. Then I’m gonna bend you over the side of the tub and pound you until you can’t see straight. I want to be the only thing you can think of when you sit down at that fucking party.”

“Oh fuck,” Steve breathed, writhing on the bed and gripping the sheets so hard he thought he might break something. Bucky massaged Steve’s balls with his other hand, rolling them gently before pressing back further, teasing Steve’s soft, sensitive hole with his finger, not even penetrating just playing with it. Steve keened, arching off the bed and coming like a rocket. It had been _weeks_.

When Steve was home they could barely go for a few hours without getting their hands all over each other. Apparently, along with super soldier appetites, they had both gotten super soldier libidos. Or maybe that was just how Steve and Bucky would have always been if Steve hadn’t been born with a weak heart that made it hard to get it up half the time and Bucky hadn’t constantly been scared shitless of getting caught and beat to death out back of their building one day.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Bucky breathed. “I want you so badly baby, I missed you so much.”

“You can have me,” Steve promised. “I’m here. I’m yours, Buck, I always been yours.” Steve pulled Bucky down by his hair, the Jon snow styling completely ruined now and kissed him within an inch of his life.

They were late to one of Namor’s massive balls but they couldn’t have cared less.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to [mara_jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mara_jade) for being so patient and understanding with me considering how long it took me to produce this fic for her. 
> 
> I really hope everyone enjoyed it! 
> 
> Kudos and comments are always welcome :)

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it!
> 
> Kudos, comments, and feedback are always welcome! <3


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